Blood Ties
by DoctorKatie
Summary: Sequel to White Roses. There is an important message for Rose, but it waits at the end of a dangerous hunt. With the Doctor kidnapped, Rose is nearly on her own. Rated M for future chapters.


I can't open my eyes yet. I just… Well. I suppose I won't. I won't open them yet. No. I'll just lie here, alone. I'm lying in my bed, relaxing and the Doctor's just popped off for a shower or a nibble. He'll be back in a minute and tell me where we're heading next, after a snog.

The grates of the TARDIS's floor biting into my hips and knees and her keening sound of mourning made my fantasy short lived and I opened my eyes. A rush of steam hissed from the console, and I had the impression that the TARDIS was fuming. Someone had dared to take her thief and hurt her pink and yellow once-human. I touched the coral next to the console comfortingly.

Had it only been this morning when the call came in on the TARDIS phone?

_The phone rang... in the console. How very rarely that seemed to happen, but when it did, it was always quite the adventure. "Heellloo," the Doctor answered it, bringing a smile to my lips. "Good Ship TARDIS here." The Doctor paused a moment to listen, and his face became serious._

"_What? No, she's not here. Who is this?" Another pause._

"_How did you get this number, what do you want?" His face fell and he looked at me, resigned. "Yes, I understand. We'll be there shortly." He looked at me. Oh, no. I thought. I know that look. I've seen it a hundred times. Benjamin McDonald… my creator. This wasn't the first time he called looking for me. _

"_Doctor, what d'ya me 'we'll be there shortly?' 'Cause if that's Ben he can kiss my ass. I've told you this. I know you think this situation is a gift, and you're probably right. But he didn't even ask me. And he lied about who he was. And he let me kill someone." I leveled my best scary-vampire gaze at him. He didn't budge. He had that look on his face; the one he gets when he has to tell a civilization that they can't be saved. _

"_Rose, I'm sorry. I'm so, so very sorry, but… Ben is dying."_

_That took me aback. Dying? Ben is a couple of hundred years old. Can't get disease, never ages… that only leaves…murdered. "What happened?"_

"_Poison. Some kind of poison," he replied. Damn that look of sympathy in his eyes. Leave it to him to know that I still cared about Ben, even though I'm pissed off. He looked down at the coordinates. I could see the familiar code for London in 2008 flashing. He'd already started the journey home. _

_When we touched down and met with the shady characters that were supposedly Ben's friends, I couldn't help but notice that they led us right past the flat where he and I stayed. Couldn't help but notice the Doctor noticing too. _

"_Um. S'cuse me! We've just passed the flat. He still lives there, I can smell him all over the area." The Doctor's eyebrows went up. For some reason, he found my heightened senses incredibly alluring. Any mention of them made him act about twelve years old. These days, sniffing out what he had for breakfast or jumping to the top of the wardrobe for his jacket was just as effective as showing him my boobs. Geniuses are thoroughly strange in bed. _

"_Yeah, that's his place," one of the vampires said, a bit exasperatedly. "He's staying with us. Goddamned hunter came at him. Silver nitrate injection! I thought that was only werewolves!"_

_This time my eyebrows lifted. I was wearing a sliver necklace and pointed out as much to the Doctor. He shrugged. Vampires must new for him, too._

_We rounded a corner and headed toward the seedier part of my hometown. There we were jumped. Someone jabbed a needle in my arm. So we ran. Made it back to the TARDIS. Someone must have been following closely, because the next thing I knew, I was waking up and the Doctor was gone. _

S'okay, girl. I know who did this. I'll find 'im," I cajoled. Comforting a spaceship might have seemed weird to me a couple of years ago, but the TARDIS had become my friend. She was very much alive and we had one thing in common: we both loved and would die for (or kill for) our Doctor. And the TARDIS was a very handy ally to have.

She provided me with appropriate clothes. I had taken to wearing my old clothes while traveling with the Doctor again. This was for his comfort, not mine. But this was to be a hunting trip like no other I'd ever been on, and I needed to wear clothes that would be as silent as I was.

It was clear to me that Ben sent those men to lead us into a trap. They must have gotten confused, because they snatched the wrong person to bring home to daddy. I would track the Doctor to the ends of the galaxy. And now I had help.

The TARDIS is a fantastic ally. She's very quick and managed to gather a breath analysis of one of our assailants. A vampire male from London whose last meal had been an Asian female. He drained her. I knew where to start now. I needed to find an Asian woman who had been murdered exactly fourteen hours ago.

I grim smile graced my face. Been quite a few months since I had to hunt.


End file.
